Guesstimate — Estimate the number of Harry Potter books sold this year in India

Welcome to Day 9/30 of Mastering Guesstimates

Sanyam Aggarwal
3 min readOct 16, 2023

Lumos!

Hello Everyone, lets continue this series of mastering guesstimates and today we are going to dive deep into the World of Harry Potter.

Q. Estimate the number of Harry Potter books sold this year in India.

Clarifying Questions:

  1. Which Harry Potter book are we talking about?
  2. Calculation for e-book or paperback?
  3. Calculation for first hand, rent or second hand?
  4. Which language are we talking about?

A. Consider only Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in english. Lets calculate for paperback and first hand book.

Assumptions:

  1. India population is ~140 Crores.
  2. English speaking population in India is about 25%.

Approach:

Population of India = 140 Crores

English speaking = 25%(140 Crores) = 35 Crores

Age Wise Split for Population Reading Novels:

Age Wise Split for Population Reading Novels

Genre Wise Preference:

Genre Wise Preference

These 15 lakhs represent population who can or will read Harry Potter, but not everyone will be able to afford Harry Potter Book.

Considering BPL (20%) will not able to afford, that leaves us with = 80%(15 Lakhs) = 12 Lakhs

Now, These 12 Lakh people:

Here, we have concluded that around 72 thousand copies of Harry Potter will be sold this year in India.

Lets assume out of 8 books, number of books of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone sold will be = 40%(72K) = ~28K Books

Total number of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone books sold in India this year would be around 28000

Nox!

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Stay tuned for Day 10/30 of Mastering Guesstimates, Until then, let curiosity be your guide and let the adventure begin!

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Sanyam Aggarwal

Data and Product Enthusiast | Follow Me 🫶 to Conquer the Art of solving Guesstimates